I Want to Teach Forever

Sunday, October 8, 2017

I always felt like October was the hardest part of the school year. The honeymoon period at the beginning of the school year always seemed to peter out around this time, as students would begin to push boundaries like never before.

If your school is on a six week grading period like the ones in my region, the first report cards are just being sent out, and how your kids react to them affects their behavior. If they passed without much effort and are content with it, they might slack off and goof around because things seem too easy. If they failed and have a history of struggling in school, they might already view your class as a lost cause and try to give up.

For students and teachers, this is often the middle of the longest uninterrupted period in your school calendar, with no holidays or special events to break things up until Thanksgiving.

Thursday, April 27, 2017

It's very humbling to know that even though it's been three years since I shared something new on this blog that many, many educators are still discovering and rediscovering these resources.

I get daily reminders of this in my inbox, in the form of requests for access to various Google Docs I have shared. I respond to each request, but sometimes the requests come from servers that don't allow incoming messages (some school districts still do this), and I also just wanted to post a reminder to save you the trouble of waiting.

When you click "Share" on a Google Doc, you're asking for permission to edit the original document, not for your own copy to edit.

Instead of clicking "Share", you can save or download a copy to edit as you like by going to File > Save a copy or File > Download as. The former saves a copy to your Google Docs, the latter lets you choose the format you like to save it on your hard drive.

Again, thank you to the many educators who continue to find useful things among these many years of ideas and resources. I'm glad to be able to contribute something to this noble profession despite no longer being in the classroom.

Monday, May 19, 2014

Aidil, a teacher from Singapore read about the number sense card game 123 Switch! that I shared a few years ago. Like any good teacher, he tried it out with his students and when it didn't work as planned, he adjusted the rules and game play to make it easier.

Adaptation is probably any teacher's most important skill in today's ever-changing education landscape, so I am excited to share Aidil's improved version:

Rules for adding the cards:
Add 2 same coloured cards together,
If they are 2 diffferent coloured cards, the resulting card will take on the colour of the larger numbered card and its magnitude will be the difference of the 2 cards.

Explaining the 123 Switch game to my students took quite a while and there was a lot to digest as the combinations were quite overwhelming for them as they had to work out a proper number sentence and then decide if they are to put 1, 2 or 3 cards down.

Because my students couldn't grasp the rules of the games clearly, a few students lost interest in the game.

After the lesson, I decided to see how I could simplify the game and involve more people. So I came up a variation with your game. Here is how it goes.

You can start a game with 6-9 players.
Deal out all the cards with the jokers included.
The player to the dealers left will start. He will put a card down on the first box.

For example:

B3+ ___ = ____

The second player will put a card in the second box, for example,

B3+ R6 = ____

The third player will then see if he has the card to complete the number sentence, which is R3

Then he will then start of the new number sentence by putting down the first cards.

If he does not have R3, he will choose a card from his pile and put it facing down in the third box. The fourth player will then see if he has R3 and so on. The person that completes the number sentence correctly collects all the cards on the game board and starts off a new number sentence.

The game ends when a player has no more cards left over and the last pile is won by a player. The player with the most cards in hand wins.

The game ends straightaway when a person collects all the Joker cards.

The third card on the game board must be of magnitude 10 or lower.

If for example, it is a player's turn to put the second card when he has only Black cards bigger than 3 on hand, for example B4

B7+ B4 = B11 (there is no B11 card)

Since he can't put down a card to satisfy the condition for the third box, he will put any card facing down in the second box, forfeiting it

Monday, April 21, 2014

This mind-numbing video of professional development from Chicago has been making the rounds recently, and for me it brought back a flood of memories of awful PD my colleagues and I endured. Usually the least effective workshops were created and run internally, but that didn't necessarily mean external "experts" were much better.

In this case, at least the expert is modeling the methods they're peddling (which would be fine if such methods were any good to begin with). I can remember several examples where new methods or technology were simply talked about, looked at and then we were left to find out how to apply them to our classrooms on our own. The resources from that kind of PD ended up stuffed into the back of a closet, never to be heard from again.

Unfortunately, this is an example of why teachers are so disengaged from PD. When I would seek out relevant PD on my own, I was usually told that I couldn't take any professional days for them. Then the days that were built into the schedule were full of drivel like this. I would laugh when an administrator would try to teach us to be more engaging and to use exciting new methods by lecturing to us off of a PowerPoint for half a day. The absurdity of it all!

Seek out your own PD and take the time you need to dive into it, if you can. If not, take advantage of what's increasingly available online (often for free) and find a way to fit it around whatever new acronym your school has chosen to follow this year. Your teaching will be better off because of it.

Monday, April 14, 2014

Creativity and problem solving were the keys to my day-to-day life as a teacher, and I poured myself so fully into that life that I had little time or energy to put into anything else. In my life outside the classroom, I still have the need to create and put that drive into a variety of projects, including writing and playing music. I started that project over a year ago, but it took until recently for me to write anything about my time in the classroom.

When the inspiration came, I wanted to tell the story of my students, not any particular one but an amalgam of those I met over the years. The result is this acoustic, country-tinged ballad entitled Janie's Song. Lyrics are below.

Janie was the new girl, she had trouble making friendsAt that age, there's no easy kind of change.She was bullied every day, before we cared what that waslivin' with a most familiar pain

Janie was the only child from a single parent homeJust her and mom alone against the worldShe saw this as a dead end town, next generation stickin' aroundstickin' to the same script as before

I've been in your shoes--Singing awkward off-key teenage bluesAnd your good heart my be deniedYou'll come out stronger on the other sideLeave this far behind you in a couple of yearsI guess all that I'm tryin' to say, is Janie, wipe away those tears

One day she put her head down, wouldn't talk to anyoneI whispered "you can always trust in me"The burdens these kids carry around would break the backs of mostAnd your heart will not allow your eyes to see

Janie came to me and cried, said she might take her own life,"Nobody here would miss me if I died"I would miss what you could do with the good heart that's inside of youYou're just a seed and the flower's still to come

I've been in your shoes--Singing awkward off-key teenage bluesAnd your good heart my be deniedYou'll come out stronger on the other sideLeave this far behind you in a couple of yearsI guess all that I'm tryin' to say, is Janie, wipe away those tears

Friday, April 11, 2014

Improving the World of Educational Gaming [Kotaku] - I agree wholeheartedly with the author here--the simplest improvement we can make is touting the educational aspects of everyday games while doing the opposite for educational games.

Monday, March 17, 2014

There are moments when I am on stage, performing original music where I feel I am in "the zone." You will never convince me that I am anything more than a mediocre guitarist, singer and songwriter, but there are moments where everything seems to flow so effortlessly, I might as well be Jimi Hendrix up there. The energy in the crowd also seems to rise, at least from my perspective, as I am in "the zone." This is at the heart of Trying Not to Try: The Art and Science of Spontaneity.

So when Edward Slingerland discusses wu-wei and de, ancient Chinese ideas about spontaneous, effortless action and a sort of charismatic energy that spurs people to follow, I knew what he was talking about. We identify it commonly in sports in America, such as when Michael Jordan would take over in critical, game-changing situations, or when Peyton Manning carves up an opponent's defense seemingly at will. As Slingerland points out, we can't explain it, precisely because it is something that seems natural.

This is not a how-to book, and the suggestions about how to get closer to these states are largely buried under a heavy but interesting layer of Chinese thought, modern science and analogies. As I struggled to glean specific examples and ideas to apply to the classroom, I realized I was ironically trying too hard and losing sense of the central ideas of the book.

I would recommend this book as a lens with which to examine both ourselves and our culture, and as a not-so-subtle reminder that there's much to be gained in letting go, not trying so hard, and just going with the flow. For a hardworking teacher trying to get through the last stretch of the spring semester, that's an important lesson.

The good folks at Crown Publishers provided the review copy that I am once again giving away to one lucky reader. To enter this giveaway, email teachforever@gmail.com with the subject TRYING GIVEAWAY by 11:59pm CST this Wednesday, 3/19/14.

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

I recently heard about another great contest for students: the Made By Milk Carton Construction Contest. It's open to elementary, middle and high school students, with winning schools receiving $5,000!

Interested in participating in the upcoming Spring 2014 Made By Milk Carton Construction Contest? The program resumes with a new theme, “Stories!” Participants are required to use a minimum of 100 cartons to build a character, symbol or scene from a story. Think fairy tales, epic sagas, or science fiction! Entries will be accepted now until April 16, 2014. Visit www.madebymilkcontest.com for official rules and upcoming contest details.

Last year's theme was "Transportation" and the contest's sponsor Evergreen Packaging sent along a couple of winning entries. With this year's "Stories" theme, this would be a great project for English/Language Arts classes, art classes or for extracurricular group like National Honor Society or recycling club.

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About Me

I am a former teacher, writer and blogger living in the Rio Grande Valley. A proud Teach For America alumnus (RGV 03), I've taught math and social studies for years in a variety of school types and grade levels. I was born and raised in New Jersey.